Sorry for the stupid question, but do you have a Venmo, PayPal, or even a Patreon we can contribute to? I could have just missed it but I didn't see any on your Twitter or UA-cam pages. I absolutely love your videos but I feel terrible watching them knowing that you're not getting any revenue for them because of the stupid AdSense BS.
Good video, my idea for improving orcs is by leaning into their affinity for combat, Grumsh made the orcs so they can participate in his forever war with Corillian and left a natural desire for battle and bloodshed, so the ones that left Grumsh's control have to deal with coming up with their own answer to their battlelust. Those orcs can often end up as mercenaries, gladiators, duelists, bodygaurds, martial artists, and even warlords. But they can move this competitive nature to more creative pursuits. It explains why you can often see them as barbarians and horde monsters, yet allows you to come up with some that are genuinely good. I may have taken some inspiration from Mass Effect's Krogans
@@astercat49 Considering the original Easter Islanders had a myth that said their creator god one day got mad and sank every island EXCEPT Easter Island by bashing the rest with a crowbar, only sparing Easter Island because that divine crowbar got stuck in a volcano (and I like to think whoever's saying this added "or something I dunno"), yes, it very much sounds like a believable mythology.
It reminds me of one of the Norse myths. Basically Thor and friends were travelling to the land of Giants, where they encounter, you guessed it, a Giant. He's nice and offers to carry the group's food in his giant bag, but a problem comes when Thor wants to open the bag. He finds the knot is too strong for him to open, so he tries going to the Giant, only to find him asleep. Thor has absolutely zero tolerance for this and immediately strikes the Giant so hard with Mjölnir that the very earth is raised into jagged peaks. And that's how the Norse believed mountains were made.
Inspired the idea to make gruumsh's eye be an artifact that must be recovered from an elf temple and somehow make contact with gruumsh to restore his true self
Fun fact: "Green" Orcs come from Warhammer's green Orks. GW made them green, so they would be distinct from Tolkien Orcs, who are described as having a swart and sallow (dark and sickly) skin tone. Then Warcraft made their Orcs green influenced by Warhammer, and then everyone else seemed to follow suit, including D&D. Ironic that GW made their Orks green so they would be different from other Orcs, and now thanks to them, green is the default colour for most Orcs.
Didn’t Warhammer start because GW got the rights to sell DnD models in the UK? So that might help explain why the official Orc color in DnD is the Tolkien one.
TBF Dungeon Meshi has some of the best fantasy race designs I've ever seen. I love that they made half-foots (halflings) not just Hobbits or miniature tallmen (humans).
The only Dungeon Meshi version of a race I’m iffy on is their Kobolds. Like, they’re adorable don’t get me wrong, but my brain has a hard time reconciling the human sized dog people as being equivalent to D&D’s Small lizard men. To be fair though, that’s not Dungeon Meshi’s fault, it’s really just all of the general fantasy genre’s fault for not agreeing what a ‘Kobold’ is
@@SkeleGemJapanese D&D is a whole another branch with the traditions of their own. One of such traditions is orcs being really pig-like (Sometimes outright bipedal pigs), and another - kobolds being dog-like.
One of the many characters I've created was a wildfire druid orc. I gave them the mentality of, "Never fight nature." "You will wear your scars into battle with pride, but let them heal first." "Revenge will be worthless if you die." Still very much war hungry, but more pragmatic. I enjoy working with lore that I've been given.
I JUUST played a orc druid for my first game ever oh my god THIS was the EXACT vibe i was going for, maybe with a bit more booky and healing vibes BUT THIS. oh my god thank you so much for the inspiration
Once had an orc paladin whose oath was to strive to be the best at anything he pursued His chosen pursuit? The parties chef who always spoke about how cooking was a battle against your ingredients, using fire and utensils to force them to submit to your will That was a fun character
Now I'm remembering the orc character I made. A one eyed orc exiled from his tribe (that's how he lost his eye) for the unforgivable sin of not believing civilization to be automatically bad. Yet he's also a paladin granted powers by Grumsh. (Yeah, he's a little confused too.) He now wanders through more civilized lands attempting to learn their ways so that orcs might adapt them to truly conquer. He's literally an evil paladin with the Oath of Conquest.
My favorite corellon v. Gruumsh story is that they were brothers and to compensate for corellon being the prettiest most specialest, Gruumsh got an eye that could see the future, which corellon gouged out, robbing Gruumsh of his clairvoyance.
And it makes the lots things more dickish there, because they fought a war to get rid of some Eldritch horror, a war that Gruumsh was MVP of. Him not getting what he deserved makes Corellon an ass.
@@pepperjack3777 I think it just makes him more interesting. Rather than just a god born of pure evil, which I find pretty boring, he's actually kind of a tragic character
@@pepperjack3777 Except that never happened and Drow got the wooby treatment specifically because Drizzt exists. And now they are pushing for the "off shoot" Drow specifically because it makes zero sense for there to be so many "good drow" complete with their own goddess with just stragglers from Lolth. And all of this is said in mind with the idea that R.A. himself has said that he thinks Drizzt deflated the menace of the drow, the issue was that he made that criticism but never did anything about it. Because money.
the greyish skin thing is actually closer to tolkiens original description(of course if humans come in multiple colors no reason orcs cant so no reason not to have both)
I always imagine them like Tolkien orcs. But as the black uruks of mordor. Dark grey, almost black skin, greasy hair, sun resistent and bigger versions of goblins. The goblins are for me the rank and file orcs and snagas, sick yellow green or grey skin, greasy hair, crippled elves. But seeing what Half Orcs exist in LotR, too. I am concerned about those in DnD. As Saruman did something so incredible evil to create them, that not even Sauron did it. Before Saruman, only Morgoth created Half Orcs. Apparently, orcs and humans can not breed living offsprings, if not for dark magic.
Tolkien was very much about the corruption subtext, about power corrupting people and making them evil. Tolkien's orcs are the mindless killing machines people can become once they forget the simple good things of life under a corrupt power, because that power made them. It's notably about war They're twisted elves and represent evil, an evil we can find in real life, having orcs as an individual race is just radically different because the story we tell is about a people that is not elves or humans and exist on their own
@@liberalistbat6352 no, humans come in various shades of rosee and brown. Some can change colour from very pale rosee to red and light brown. If hit with blunt force, they can turn blue, violet, green and yellow.
I love this. I'm currently running a SpallJammer campaign where my players have 'adopted' the Orc tribe on Chandos. I'm combining the "jock" angle with the "Romans were the jocks of the ancient world" to turn them into a kind of "Orcish Roman Empire".
Your ability to ask “what if…?” And then create that story is incredible. You respect the connection the community has to the themes and ideas as they are and beautifully weave within and around the given constraints to tell a deeper and richer story that shines a new light on an old tale. Thank you for sharing your stories and creativity. It’s definitely helped me to be more creative with my own story telling and to look for more interesting ways to answer the question of how do I take what I like and make it what I love?
I have no other way to say it, but every time I see you’ve uploaded a video it absolutely makes my day. Thank you for sharing your imagination and creativity with us.
One of the most creative reiterations you've done thus far. I can't help but imagine two orcs sitting at a table growing slowly more angry and aggressive towards each other while arguing aboot philosophy.
I have an Orc bard and this fits him perfectly. He's a big dumb sweetheart who only wants to play heavy metal (he has an enchanted lute/amp made by his gnome friend). His only goal is to learn better licks and find a drummer he thinks is worthy enough to jam with. He doesn't like violence, but will bonk if he has to.
My half-orc bard has a Noble background (his human dad banged an orc mistress (his dad just like me frfr)) and the way I ran him was that he loves fencing and uses a rapier. He think's he's a slick fellow with a rapier but really he attacks with Strength all the time and ends up overwhelming his fencing opponents with brute force. But when a giant Nobleman just haymaker'd you with a rapier, who are you to argue with him? He uses castanets as his instrument and I use it as an excuse for him to Jojo pose all over the place.
Right, you'd think if you'll just give four different voices per gender for nine different races, at least they could be a bit distinct? But there's barely variation in them, just a very slight "They might be in their 40s rather than 20s" and that's about it. Would've been better at that point to not have the custom character speak at all, and simply have race specific grunts and such.
@@chromasus9983 Well maybe this will be fixed with mods now. We already got a fully modded companion that is in early access you could play as an origin character.
I LOVE your take on the Corellon and Gruumsh conflict. Particularly the idea that there are two distinct categories of gods: "creator" and "destroyer". It a very fun concept to play around with, as most divine beings seem to prefer being creators to destroyers. You could also use it to expand upon the relationships between Gruumsh, Corellon, and other major D&D deities. For instance, Lolth started as a "normal" elf, before using her ambition to achieve dominance for the elves, and godhood for herself. Maybe she played BOTH Corellon and Gruumsh against eachother, giving each a type of poison that would wound and weaken the other, enabling her to siphon the other. Gruumsh loses, and Lolth becomes a "creator god" by stealing some of his essence. Also, Maglubiyet. Maglubiyet is currently fighting against Gruumsh, probably to conquer the orcs and make them the 4th race to fall under his control (along with goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears). It could be that he is an unusual "destroyer" deity, that is trying to become a "creator". And he now wants Gruumsh, who was one of the original creator deities, but is now "vulnerable", being an incomplete hate-driven reflection of his former self. (Bonus points: this also helps distinguish the two otherwise similar deities. Gruumsh is warring to take the regions of creation he was wrongfully denied. Maglubiyet is an interloper, that just wants to conquer and take what was never rightfully his).
Fun fact : The reason you can play as an Orc in the elder scrolls , is because the player character made a truce / alliance with them in the second game . Well , provided you didnt just say No to main quest lady after she send you the second latter asking "I have been waiting hero so many day , you coming or not ?"
Well, more because the two-faced God of Time broke within that moment due to the divine power of an artificial god awakening to be used using an artifact of an Emperor of old, making each possibility come to pass at once - creating a god-moon out of a mortal sorcerer, granting new power to the current Empire, asserting the regional power of three separate kingdoms, allowing orcs to create their own state and be accepted as part of "civilized" society, as well as killing an immortal essence of the combined identities of an old warlord of the North who was possessed by a God of Humanity and Chaos and orchestrated numerous events behind the scenes after "dying" but not really, a personal wizard of an Emperor and the Emperor himself, who were used in one of the reawakening of the aforementioned artificial god, whereas said god then disappeared once again only to then later be discovered and attempted to be used again by a demigod who came upon his power through a subverted form of realizing his own nature as a character within a dream while still asserting his own ego to retain his identity within the dream. I love this shit
Honestly this is probably some of your best work in regards to lore. Like it fits in almost seamlessly with the already present lore especially since we already do know Gruumsh getting his eye gouged out massively changed him. Especially since that eye came with most of his wisdom and foresight in it. As for this original form of Gruumsh, I think he definitely fits a kind of nature god vibe with the Verdant Orcs. Like if Corellon and the Elves were as pretty as a field of flowers, Gruumsh and his Orcs were as mighty as the oldest of Redwood Trees. Though with the tusks, general toughness, violent temperament, and connection to nature, I think some boar theming fits them. Now with the Verdant Orcs, I could see them keeping tamed boars around as more pets, mounts, and other roles. Now I wanna make a Verdant Orc Ranger with a super swine for an animal companion.
One thing I like about the Pathfinder orcs is that they are described as being not just angry and violent, but incredibly emotional and passionate. Which means an orc's love would make them profondly loyal and affectionate. I think it would perfectly fit with your past Gruumsh version.
Maybe it's the go to response for making the lore less black and white now that people want to play what was once evil monsters. I would not be surprised that they naturally come to the same conclusion, Pathfinder was a product of 3.5 DnD after all.
Don't Pathfinder Half-Orcs have a variable attribute bonus? Meaning you can have a Half-Elf with a greater racial strength but lesser racial dexterity to a Half-Orc. Even though all the other races abide by racial bonuses and maluses, such as halflings being weaker and elves being frail. Does human attributes just overwrite any attributes of Elves or Orcs?
I'd love to see a lore revamp/rewrite like this for Lizardfolk. I don't like that they're described as "emotionless", when it's so much more interesting to have them just express them in a very different way.
I love the older editions of Lizardfolk where they have a single god/goddess that they change the gender and name of when they worship, depending on what they pray for The gods were two once but became combined when one was paralyzed by thought in what to do, meanwhile the other stood for instinctual action So the lizardfolk people follow that ethos in that setting In this setting hermaphrodite lizardfolk were also a thing and VERY intelligent and capable of magic and truly representative of their deity
My group is full of players that started in ADnD. Orcs remain an NPC race in our campaigns. In some campaigns I have them old school evil baddies but often I present them as more barbaric/tribal and warlike race rather than evil for evil's sake.
Fun fact: Plato, the philosopher, was also a wrestler. "Plato" wasn't even his real name, it's just a nickname that means broad. Supposedly, when he lost an argument in philosophy, he would just flex his muscles and suddenly the other person would agree with him. Basically what I'm saying is that Plato was 100% an orc philosopher.
Yeah indeed, anybody who is smart works out. It's just hollywood fg indoctrination that told people that skinny and weak = smart, thus all the normies stay weak fgs
The ship has very much NOT already sailed on doing an Eberron focused video. Eberron is great, and by far my favorite D&D setting. Not to mention Keith Baker has also put out two "3rd party" (I struggle to call them 3rd party when he literally created Eberron) source books for 5e in Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron, with a third and final one on the way called Frontiers of Eberron. Not to mention an additional bit of content in the form of Dread Metrol, which delves into an Eberron specific Domain of Dread. Keith Baker and Eberron have addressed one of my biggest issues with the way 5e has gone about tackling different settings, that being the "one-and-done" mentality where they only release a single sourcebook for a specific setting. It's led to 5e feeling a wide as an ocean, but deep as a puddle, when it comes to worldbuilding. People want their favorite settings to be more fleshed out and elaborated on, and thanks to Keith Baker we've actually gotten that with Eberron, even if it's not TECHNICALLY official content (and with what WoTC has been putting out lately, who really cares about what's official anymore?).
What Keith did with Goblins and Orcs is one of the main reasons Eberron has become the default setting I run in D&D. Orcs being the first Druids that fought back an invasion of Aberrations is so badass in my opinion.
To be fair; is not even a retelling. He didn't retcon anything, he just delved further in to the material and came to a logical conclusion of why orcs and Gruumsh are the way they are. If Ef Greenwood isn't going to fill in the missing details, Pointy Hat might as well. Lloths fall and how it effects drow society is another prime example of how the so-called "good" creator gods aren't exactly that good and how the "evil" creator gods and their creations aren't exactly evil and are, in actuality, victims.
"It's wrong to just assume that the god of an entire people is evil, vicious, and underhanded. Okay, let's start by assuming that the god of the elves was evil, vicious, and underhanded..."
@@sweett3253 Sorry for long delay in responding. My advice is to read Mordenkainen's tome of foes. He punishes all elves because Lolth wanted to replace him.
My favorite character in Forgotten realms was a Half Orc Druid, who's motivation was raised by a farmer, his mother died during childbirth after she and other townsfolk were rescued from an Orc bandit group (you can guess what happened), he had twin brother, they both were more orc than human which caused the blood of Gruumsh to "boil" harder in them, they were bullied, his brother ran away, my character ran into the forest one day to chop trees to let off his anger, suddenly one of the trees went "ouch!", then when an oak Treeant held my (teenage) character in his hand and saw him terrified and lost chose to teach him the ways of Druidism to make up for his rampage of cutting down trees and to help him control his anger. My character had then three personal quests that was open ended: Find out what happened to his twin brother, repair and regrow forests, and to try to overcome the curse that flowed through his blood due to the wicked god of the Orcs. ...but. Would the ways of druidism be enough to overcome the curse which infected his orcish blood? Would Khaddock the Restless ever find a way to quell the rage Boiling within his very veins? Edit: and now I've watched the entire video, it fits Khaddock even better!
I really love the idea of these Verdant orcs. I actually had an idea about them that I think is cool. What if, for a story where they are trying to cure and restore Gruumsh, you make it so they are not all the way green, but instead are gray with green spots. As they go further in restoring Gruumsh, his influence on them grows, signified by the green spreading on them.
YES *PLEASE* make an Eberron video!!! I'm so looking forward to what you could add to the setting, and Keith baker *has* been making followup books for it, even if not licensed with WOTC - see Exploring Eberron and Morgrave Miscellany
Eberron is the best official setting for use in non-official rules sets. Pointy Hat will benefit greatly from a video or two of Eberron based exploration.
Ok, this is REALLY well-done! You clearly put a lot of thought into analyzing and re-imagining the role of orcs in fantasy. I truly respect the dedication to not forcing a retcon on the Forgotten Realms lore AND creating something that isn't harmfully stereotyped. Inspirational, in fact. Phenomenal work!! 💚 P.S. As a lover of the Eberron setting, I'd be curious about what you'd pull from to make a twist. (Warforged are probably the lowest-hanging fruit but they already got a video - maybe Shifters? Maybe as an example of the many attempts to bridge mystic fantasy and science fantasy? 500k special? 👀)
Dude, your videos were extremely good before (and still are). But this one is off the charts amazing. The jokes land so hard, I had several laugh out moments. That never happens to me. Amazing job, man. Wish you all the best.
I've read somewhere a version of that "Orc Genesis" lore where Grumsh made them to be able to survive and conquer any territory, so i usually use biome themed colored orcs in my games, like, grey for mountais, yellow for deserts, white for snowy places, green for forest, i also give them some bonuses based on that biomes.
FWIW, the original published account of the "biome lottery" story didn't just have Gruumsh poke holes in the landscape to make caves. His spear-strikes blighted parts of the territories assigned to each of the other races - rotting the elves' forests, cracking the dwarves' mountains with deep chasms, splitting the gnomes' hills into dusty badlands, and drying up the halflings' meadows into wastes - to spite the other gods for mocking him, as well as create places for his orcs to survive and grow strong through hardship. Basically, if humans got the right to live in any habitat, Gruumsh's hissy-fit got the orcs the right to live anywhere that sucks.
Eberron does a lot right. I'd love to see a Pointy Hat video on it. Lots of excellent lore and really does a good job flipping tropes and giving a lot of ways to make it your own.
Dude this Verdant Orcs concept is downright brilliant. I’m running a campaign with a pacifist, violence-as-last-resort party and wanted to incorporate Orcs, my favorite race, but didn’t know how. Can I steal this? Also, appreciated how the video didn’t take the lazy approach to explaining why Orcs are “problematic.” Kudos!
While I wasn’t expecting trash (always love your videos to bits), I wasn’t expecting this to become one of my favorites from you!! You've inspired me in my little non-dm imaginings!
Now that's what I call some good homebrew! I can already imagine an Verdant Orc fighter who specializes in defensive fighting tanking around on battlefields playing at being a Merc with a heart. Background is Soldier and was once the village guard for a small village of Verdant Orcs. One day his mother and other Orcs Elders receive a vision telling of a set of scrolls that might be the answer to restoring "The Green" to all orc kind. A type of astral magic that could heal magic through "faith". Unsure of the true meaning of this vision, but still eager to find out if there truly is a way to unite all of Orc kind once more, he sets out to adventure as a means to learn more about the possibilities that this vision could bring!
The best interpretation of Orcs I've seen (amendment: the best, prior to this video) was, once again, Sir Terry Freaking Pratchett, RIP. They were a rumored artificial race, believed to be made primarily from Goblin stock, engineered to be supersoldiers; not just fast and strong, but highly intelligent. A main character in one book realizes that he, himself, IS a surviving Orc, and on seeing a vision of the original Orc armies, realized that they couldn't have been based on goblins--the only race ferocious enough to based them off of was *humans.*
WotC has tried to "fix" the issues presented by older editions, something that is admirable, but they often take the laziest option when they do so. You however, put in the effort without retconning anything, which is incredible. So thank you and please keep adding to this game.
Basically giving all of the races the same attributes and taking away a lot of the racial bonuses that made certain playable races interesting or unique in the first place. All in the hopes of not being racist towards a bunch of fictional races. A large population of people are literally afraid to offend someone's imagination.
@@steveoconnivo9666it's exhausting. As someone who actually cares about intersectionality and systemic abuses, watching them be like this is just making these problems harder to talk about. Too many new players think that they have to follow the books to the letter. Ya don't. As a permaDM of 20+ years now.... just TALK to me. Tell me you want your elf to have strength instead. Ask for little story relevant changes and freebies. I WANT to give them to you because it may just mean you care about telling a story. But 5e players just can't do that for some reason. Can't imagine why, WotC. Not like you decided to turn new players into gatekeepers over a hobby they're the fresh meat in, WotC. Not like you need to get out of your own way, Wot. CEEEEEEEE.
@@steveoconnivo9666yeah I do not like the "flattening/homogenization" of all races. That simply makes the lore less interesting. While I do prefer players being able to apply their attribute bonuses as they please, I still want to see the default bonuses for the race itself as it provides context for their natural strengths and weaknesses. Players are main characters so of course they can be the exception to a rule. If anything, a potential scholarly magi Orc is an interesting character concept *because* it subverts expectations. We need the base expectation in order to make this subversion. And people love their subversions- Drizzt didn't become the most popular DnD character for no reason. Also, if you see Hadozee or Orcs and immediately start imagining real world ethnic groups... That seems like a you problem.
absolutely love this little progression -- i've been waiting for a chance to play with a half orc paladin based around the same idea, though i'll admit i hadn't known about the coloration thing. the chlorophyll explanation was so cool!
In an asian-themed (Chinese and Korean, not Japanese) world I created for a oneshot, orcs are the most technologicaly advanced of all races and second in number only to elves (Who reproduce as quickly as other races while living and being young for 10 times as long, so no wonder they're first). Orcs are so advanced in fact, that they invented gunpowder by attempting to copy dragon breath, and were the first outside elven lands to develop both glassworking and metallurgy, and on top of all that they control and develop every major trade route in the known world (90% of the world is unknown, but it's still a lot). But they're still warriors, just more British empire and less vikings in terms they do warfare. Edit: Also, in this world dwarves are Korean.
In my fantasy setting the closest thing to the Orcs would be oni Which comes from Japanese folklore but their origins were just originally humans that were so desperate to get away from a virus made by a god so they decided to consume demonic blood which changed them.
That is AWESOME!🤩 What does their technology resemble? I know elves tend to have a nature or futuristic-themed, but does orc tech have a sort of “London steampunk” sort of look
I think this is genuinely one of the best videos you've made. The way you incorporated the lore, the script, the editing, amazing. also, i hate to be that person, but do you know when you'll post the Archon stats? your video inspired me to write a whole campaign so having a stat block for one of the main NPCs would be nice 😅
I absolutely adore orcs, I think they are endlessly fascinating both as genre staples and what that entails as well as how varied and fun their manifestations can be. The dnd iterations have issues but I think Volo’s has some real highlights. What you did with Gruumsh was fantastic! It makes so much sense and is just plain interesting and engaging which is a gold star for lore/worldbuilding. I’ll always be of the opinion that Gruumsh is kinda justified cause what the other gods did was messed up. You really flew with that and gave Gruumsh some great nuance, which is hard given how hes like. Only critique I could offer (and this is quite common with dnd orcs so don’t feel bad) but some of the other orc gods present some incredible opportunities to add onto this. Luthic alone is imo the most interesting facet to orc lore in dnd but she is sadly often forgotten due to how niche she is. She is currently the main divine steward behind orcs in canon lore (or whatever counts for canon now, but thats a whole thing) and is a protector and shepherd as well as a role model for orc women and mothers. In contrast to her brutal and violent husband she is much more subtle and defensive, though still strong and fierce in her own right. Honestly she is likely the only reason orcs haven’t completely died out as she is responsible for fertility as well as reigning in their bloodlust spurred on by her husband. Its also implied shes in a loveless marriage with Gruumsh which is just fascinating. Given all that it would be pretty easy to add her into the story. She was Gruumsh’s devoted wife before his madness, but now finds herself having both to endure the shattered husk of the god she used to love, as well as working to ensure her people can survive and possibly heal him. She could be heavily influential among the verdant orcs, though I imagine she has to spend much of her focus on the non verdant orcs. I would also wonder if she would not be quite spoiled against the vengeance many orcs seek given what it has wrought, no matter how justified the initial intentions. This would explain her more defensive nature as well as why shes so unsatisfied with Gruumsh as she might ultimately blame him for this. Drama! (Its interesting to note that theres some small implications that Lolth and Gruumsh’s alliance against Corellon might have been something more…) Yurtrus is the orc god of death and disease. Maybe he spawned after the curse broke Gruumsh as a sort of manifestation of its effects. He is that poison made divine through its merging with Gruumsh. Thus he is responsible for the withering and entropic effects orcs have upon things they attempt to create. It would fit within his general domain and make him a potential obstacle or a potential avenue to healing Gruumsh. I’m just spitballing though. Still there are many possibilities. Shargaas is also an orc god of death, though hes much more focused around darkness, cowardice, and trickery. Imagine if he was completely different before Gruumsh lost his eye, but upon seeing his overgod so hideously changed he ran and hid instead of attempting to handle his fury with the rest of the gods. This outcast him and branded him as he is now, a god of rogues and scoundrels who skulk shamefully in the dark of night. He could be an element that despises the verdant orcs for he thrives on caves and dark places rather than the sun or nature. Gruumsh’s two sons are the least interesting of the bunch, but maybe they were both effected by their father’s madness too. Bahgtru was too weak in the mind and so succumbed to his father’s madness wholeheartedly, turning him into the boundless rage monster we know today. Ilneval may have been able to handle the curse, remaining mostly sane, though still tinged with a need for bloodlust and battle. This would explain why hes the more strategic and calculating of the family. He probably supports his father’s mission of revenge and is a patron of those orcs, verdant or otherwise, who seek to fulfill that duty. Theres so much more that could be covered with each god but hopefully this can give a partial idea of how to include the often forgotten other deities in the orc pantheon. I loved this video dude, keep up the good work!
another detail on how you could play a half orc in an interesting way at least following the manual: Half orcs are very emotional creatures as the player handsbook says in the race description "Beyond the rage of Gruumsh, half-orcs feel emotion powerfully. Rage doesn't just quicken their pulse, it makes their bodies burn. An insult stings like acid, and sadness saps their strength. But they laugh loudly and heartily, and simple pleasures - feasting, drinking, wrestling, drumming, and wild dancing - fill their hearts with joy. They tend to be short-tempered and sometimes sullen, more inclined to action than contemplation and to fighting than arguing. And when their hearts swell with love, they leap to perform acts of great kindness and compassion." you can write excellent concepts with this basis. As well as excellent roleplaying (and above all they make half-orcs who go beyond the basic concept of "bad monster go brr" even more viable)
Sometimes I forget how awesome and talented Pointy Hat is when it comes to storytelling. I had literal CHILLS while listening to the lore of Gruumsh having a represed psich that is actibly trying to restore his children. I love everything in this video
An interesting take on Gruumsh. Typically in my games, I've not redeemed Gruumsh or given him a magical reason like this (I also don't have it be Corellon who he fought) but instead I use Luthic, his wife. She's not much "nicer" but she embodies the literal energy of a mama bear for her Orc Children, so I tend to have Gruumsh losing it over vengeance and getting back what they lost, and Luthic, who originally was with him, finally going "I love you, but our CHILDREN need something different." and offering a different path. Sometimes I even fast-forward and have Gruumsh and her working together.
Back in the 3e days. I noticed Paladins in Fareun needed a god, but did not need to match the God's alignment. SO I rolled up a Half-Orc Paladin of Gruumsh. His goal was to bring back the original Gruumsh of Balance. His main enemies were the church of Grumsh,m who wanted to keep the current Gruumsh,. DMs hated it and called me a bad RPer. But now, It just means I made the first Verdant Orc.
Actually, yeah! I would love if you made a video on Eberron. I love your way of explaining stuff and eberron isnt necessarilly the most intuitive of settings (same with Dragonlance/Krynn) for me at least. Looking forward for it already my friend, have a great week!
I love this video!! I'm glad we can both embrace the alignment "inheritence" while also allowing for complexity and depth. Awesome story. I will definitely use this in my setting
@@Lilliathi the video itself doesn't talk at all about the origins of orcs in fantasy, instead it talks about the effects of bioessentialism in fiction on player agency and moral stakes. the sister article does, though. it outlines that tolkien's orcs were a stand-in for mongols, and when general sentiments of 'barbaric and uncivilized' people shifted from them to black americans, the barbaric and uncivilized fantasy race changed to match the culture. a different discussion to origin itself, is whether or not indulging in, generally, bioessentialism in fiction, and specificially, such media with troubling origins, says anything about us personally... which is kind of a big question mark.
@@g_vost Tolkien's orcs do not show anything close to mongol culture, and an equivalent to Asia exists in LotR. This article was written by left wing extremists who are looking for racism. The same extremists, who deny bioessentialism, aka: genetics.
i just wanted to say that ive been making homebrew setting as sorta a passion project for my own expansive menagerie of characters i'll never play because i'm a forever dm. i've used brownies and courtly elves as key parts of the lore as one of the defining features of the world is how it WAS an extention of the feywild but isn't anymore. so thank you so much for creating them, also alarcan from the 100k sub oneshot is there too. i made up a tavern for when i ran that oneshot thats run by a blunt mannered orc and chefed a tiefling who is so squeaky he's barely understandable. i try and include it in every oneshot or campaign i run because of the reactions i get whenever they walk into a tavern and hear oliver (the orc's) voice and the wacky explaination of how they somehow moved their business to an entirely new location.
I came across this vid at the exact right time. I'm starting a new DnD campaign and want to play an green half-orc that leans toward pacifism (as a base marker) and live the his younger years of life as a nomad in the forest. this is such a help!! Awesome vid!
I love the way you write and how you take prior lore and themes and flip them on their heads or add to them in a creative and interesting way. We have very similar creative styles and I hope to get to meet you some day to just say thank you for your content and to shake your hand. I guess that means I'll have to make it out to Gencon eventually. Anyway, thanks for all of your videos and free classes, races and stories. I really appreciate them!
I love these changes to Gruumsh and it really does help flesh out the godbuilding lore! But Pointy, please! We still need the Archon Dragon Stat block! The description hasn't been updated yet! 😭
In 3.5 Monster Manual on pp. 203-204, there is a section for Orcs as Characters, as there are for many humanoid and -ish races. Without going into the twiddly bits, their mods are +4 Str, -2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha. So they have been available as a playable race for at least 20 years.
@@chakradarrat8832The stats are perfect for a savage evil race, though: strength for rushing and raiding, low int to prevent them from becoming an organised threat, low wisdom so they don't understand their lifestyle keeps them down, and low charisma so they only listen to force and fail to negotiate :P
There's a pathfinder class called trox who have +6 str and the same negatives. Just taking the chance to prop up one of the coolest PC races in a hot minute tbh.
I mean, play the game you want to play, but I don't get that people nowadays want to simultaneously say "people hate and fear orcs and tieflings" and "orcs and tieflings have nothing inherently evil about them; they're basically just humans with a different skin color and some physical differences." I mean, are we making two entire D&D races around the concept of "racism is bad"? I agree racism is bad, but that's such a lukewarm uninteresting take nowadays. I'm sure that everyone at the table already agrees that racism is bad. Not to mention that this way you're effectively using orcs and tieflings as an analogy for black people if you make them the "not evil, but people hate them anyway" race, which is kind of weird. Meanwhile I never saw the old "naturally drawn to evil" orcs as being analogues to black people. And if orcs are inherently drawn to evil, then it actually makes sense for people to hate and fear them. And to top it off, people still want a "yeah you can murder them without feeling bad about it" race, so now that we turned orcs into basically humans, we've given gnolls the inherently-evil tag. Which means that we still have a "murder these guys" race, only a less cool one than orcs. I'm sure that in 8E, people will go "wait it's racist to say that all gnolls are evil", and then gnolls will become basically humans, and then we'll invent some other race that people can murder without pity.
@@lightworker2956 I can't bring myself to agree that gnolls aren't cool. They're not a replacement for orcs, that's true, they're cackling, fearsome sadistic maniacs, like more malicious, large goblins. They're vicious, while orcs are brutal. An orc would smash your legs and leave you to bleed out. A gnoll would smash them then proceed to bite into your flesh for its lunch. Also, 10 bucks says IF gnolls become acknowledged as the de-facto "evil race" in dnd, one of the arguments as to why that's problematic will rely on either the matriarchal nature of their society OR on the whole pseudopenis deal, either "it's problematic because its existence implies gnolls are serial SA perpetrators and SA is wrong and must never be depicted" or "it's problematic because they have a clit-wiener like trans women out of bottom surgery so the gnolls CLEARLY represent trans people as perpetrators of SA", you know the deal. Fun thing being, barring MAYBE the matriarchy thing I doubt anything that I said would be mentioned in the text. I mean nothing that correlates orcs to black people is in there either and that lie's been repeated enough that a lot of people either believe it or pay it lip service.
From all the depictions I've ever seen, LOtR included, Elder Scrolls orcs still have the best lore. That whole Trinimac turning into Malacath myth is metal af
Another interesting thing if you want to play a peaceful orc without bending Faerun lore: take a look into odonti orcs, a type of orcs blessed by eldath who try to live in peace and harmony. But sadly they got discovered by human and got ensalved to fight as soldiers but some remained. There is some cool lore to find about them online. (But sadly it’s not 5th edition) I very appreciated your video and I really love your idea about gruumsh.
Don't forget about the Many-Arrows Tribe who usually prefer parley to raiding and even had their own kingdom for a little over a century in the Silver Marches.
I do love how much you use imagery from the Warcraft film and Durotan, because honestly that movie did such a good job both having Orcs be sympathetic AND sticking to their known history. It's a shame the movie wasn't well received because that's one of my go-to depictions of Orcs.
I really know nothing about WoW or its lore, but I saw the movie and could have watched a two hour movie just about those orc characters. They were that compelling.
I never got around to seeing Warcraft even though I was actively raiding in WoW when it came out. (Oops.) Thank you for reminding me how good that lore could be - time to finally see it! (SAURFANG THE ELDER ILU)
Like goblins and most other evil races, they are usually evil due to their gods demanding evil behavior and punishing things like kindness and peace. Get rid of evil priests demanding evil actions then they can be any alignment. Alignment isn't necessarily bad, if used as a descriptor and not a limiter.
I love the design for verdant orcs. You did a really good job reimagining the lore without retconning it. Can you do tieflings? I know they don't "need" fixing, but I'd love an original subrace, maybe based on the 4 horsemen or ars goetia demons
@@thrall6647it wasn't a reimagining though. I thought orcs were already reimagined, but this version combines conflicting depictions very well, and I'd like to see something similar for tieflings :)
Here's the thing, I actually really like the idea of different colored orcs for different areas. Green (most common) in forests and grasslands, grey in caves and caverns (and just rocky places), tan (Because I
Something from the homebrew world of my table, we have a hollow Earth type deal with sub races and monsters unique to that environment. Because the molten core of the planet center acting as a sun never sets, they have bright red skin that makes people confuse them for Hobgoblins on the surface. Then there's purple...
The story of the "biome lottery" was from his article series on nonhuman pantheons. The story of elves and orcs arising from blood shed when their creator-gods beat each other up was from "Deities & Demigods".
Good news everyone! After One DnD drops, none of this matters. Effectively Hasbro will have defeated racism by deleting the differences between all races. Wait...
Can't blame Gruumsh for being so pissed off it transfers to the orcs, if Corellon did pluck out one of his eyes I'd say he has every right to want revenge. Plus it would have been an unfair fight, the orcs' lone god against Lolth, patron goddess for the Drow, Corellon, patron god for(I assume) all elves, plus however many other elven gods there are? Big man had no shot at winning.
I really like this video. I like orcs for some reason, I think I just like to attach myself to the less popular things. This video has great suggestions for orcs which I think they deserve. The reasoning is sound and compelling and I like how you managed to make everything to work. The only thing that I would like now is something for those boar-brown orcs to make sense as well because they look cool. Maybe that coloration comes from having more hair/fur so this type of orc lives in colder climates like mountains. Given that orcs tend to be very muscular and also have a shamanistic culture in some fiction, I never thought it made sense for them to be incapable of magic. So one thing I thought of was that they are actually very connected to magic in that it passively nourishes their muscles, like their muscles absorb magic from the air like nutrition to keep them in peak condition. They definitely still train and exercise but maintain a highly muscular physique with less effort than a human. Side note, this video went from 14k to 2.2k over the course of watching it lol.
I think the brutish orc trope could still be applicable in what a certain fantasy community perceives in orcs, which could make them fear and tell stories of them doing bad things to teach their children life lessons (like with old folk tales where witches or certain fae are seen as the bad guys) What we’re told isn’t always grounded in truth, though. I like to think elves might have spread certain stories or misinformation as a ‘teehee funny fae prank’ which has embedded a common perception of orcs in the material plane.
I loath the orc reformation. But this is so original and creative; and most importantly, not a retcon. It respects the old lore. Truly great stuff. An inspiration to what could be when people want to build on the old instead of carelessly discard it.
I'm kinda sad that you left out one of the neat bits of Gruumsh lore - that before he lost his eye, he was (reputedly) a seer of sorts, able to predict and plan against his foes, always several steps ahead. And when Corellon poked his eye out, he lost that ability, and his warmaking became short-sighted and one-dimensional.
Best video on orcs I've seen! I would love to see you revisit this topic after the new PBH 2024 drops. I think ditching half-orcs in favor of rewriting orcs is a great change and making orcs primarily nomadic fills a narrative hole they needed. Unfortunately every other video I see about the new orcs just has people being big babies because they showed ONE picture of the orcs living peacefully.
The orcs in my setting are one of my favorites. They're not "evil and violent" but they are very "I want to be the best at what I do that I can be". An Orc that is heavily bought into their home culture will apply themselves really hard. Generally the only ones that aren't are either someone raised outside the usual culture they have or what amount to burnt out gifted kids. As such, if some group has an Orc at the top, that Orc is usually assumed to REALLY be good at what they're doing.
@@TheWeiseth if you’re curious, there is an Orc named Dusty that’s determined to train as many magical beasts as he can. My players didn’t put the pieces together.
@@Veelofar ahaha "Dusty", amazing 😂 oh well, sometimes the joke lands, sometimes it doesn't. But at least you and I know that you're funny, and that's what counts, right? 😅
I think the verdant orcs are a great idea to mesh with the concept of Grummsh's consort: Luthic! Shes the goddess of orcs and the cave mother who tends to the younger orcs, beign the patron of the heartmothers who raise the younglings in the caves. On my campaign she has been a great window to show that there's still good and care inside Grummsh's heart and i think she would fit like a glove in the verdant orcs mission of healing their father. Great video as always!!
Every time you say something like "It's a pity this thing doesn't exist, there's no stat block or anything" I roll my eyes, but I can't stop myself from smiling 😆
Big Bad Meanie Zucchini Brigade reporting for duty 😡
Sorry for the stupid question, but do you have a Venmo, PayPal, or even a Patreon we can contribute to? I could have just missed it but I didn't see any on your Twitter or UA-cam pages. I absolutely love your videos but I feel terrible watching them knowing that you're not getting any revenue for them because of the stupid AdSense BS.
sir yes sir
Good video, my idea for improving orcs is by leaning into their affinity for combat,
Grumsh made the orcs so they can participate in his forever war with Corillian and left a natural desire for battle and bloodshed, so the ones that left Grumsh's control have to deal with coming up with their own answer to their battlelust. Those orcs can often end up as mercenaries, gladiators, duelists, bodygaurds, martial artists, and even warlords. But they can move this competitive nature to more creative pursuits. It explains why you can often see them as barbarians and horde monsters, yet allows you to come up with some that are genuinely good.
I may have taken some inspiration from Mass Effect's Krogans
Hat is Pointy and has a point...
🤓😊@@moethelavagod2807
I have to say, the lore of how Gruumsh created the caves where the orcs live is sick as hell.
It sounds like actual mythology, like something an IRL culture would use to explain the world.
@GarlicPudding Exactly! It really feels like the creation myth of a tribal people. Which is fitting, given Orc’s societal structure.
@@astercat49 Considering the original Easter Islanders had a myth that said their creator god one day got mad and sank every island EXCEPT Easter Island by bashing the rest with a crowbar, only sparing Easter Island because that divine crowbar got stuck in a volcano (and I like to think whoever's saying this added "or something I dunno"), yes, it very much sounds like a believable mythology.
The name Gruumsh sounds so satisfying
It reminds me of one of the Norse myths. Basically Thor and friends were travelling to the land of Giants, where they encounter, you guessed it, a Giant. He's nice and offers to carry the group's food in his giant bag, but a problem comes when Thor wants to open the bag. He finds the knot is too strong for him to open, so he tries going to the Giant, only to find him asleep. Thor has absolutely zero tolerance for this and immediately strikes the Giant so hard with Mjölnir that the very earth is raised into jagged peaks. And that's how the Norse believed mountains were made.
"The DnD police can't get you at your own table"
Nobody tell him about WOTC's relationship with the Pinkertons😅
xD underrated comment
10/10 good post.
Cod or something else ppw
"The D&D police can't get you at your own table, you're fine, you're safe" *Pinkerton's sets down their beer*
Inspired the idea to make gruumsh's eye be an artifact that must be recovered from an elf temple and somehow make contact with gruumsh to restore his true self
Maybe it could be like a reverse E.O.V. as it comes from a god who was good!
It would be funny if orcs found it and destroyed it, thanking it was elven mockery of their god 😂😂
Fun fact: "Green" Orcs come from Warhammer's green Orks. GW made them green, so they would be distinct from Tolkien Orcs, who are described as having a swart and sallow (dark and sickly) skin tone. Then Warcraft made their Orcs green influenced by Warhammer, and then everyone else seemed to follow suit, including D&D.
Ironic that GW made their Orks green so they would be different from other Orcs, and now thanks to them, green is the default colour for most Orcs.
Didn't the D&D cartoon (that had green-skinned orcs) debut in the same year as Warhammer?
Yeah the WH fantasy Orcs are the bestest of greenskins, although I believe Warhammers version of many species to be superior.
Didn’t Warhammer start because GW got the rights to sell DnD models in the UK?
So that might help explain why the official Orc color in DnD is the Tolkien one.
@@americankid7782 You misread. The Dnd Orcs are green, like 40k Orks. Tolkien Orcs are have sickly skin, like in LOTR.
@@RainMakeR_Workshop No I'm not talking about the 40K orcs. I'm referring to the orcs from Warhammer Fantasy.
TBF Dungeon Meshi has some of the best fantasy race designs I've ever seen. I love that they made half-foots (halflings) not just Hobbits or miniature tallmen (humans).
I also love the monster design and ecology, especially the living armor being a colony of mollusk was brilliant.
10/10 show I absolutely love it all and am making a stat block for the mollusk armour.
I mean, Dungeon Meshi has such a great use of design for so many things. To characters, to "fashion" and races, it is just awesome and on point
The only Dungeon Meshi version of a race I’m iffy on is their Kobolds. Like, they’re adorable don’t get me wrong, but my brain has a hard time reconciling the human sized dog people as being equivalent to D&D’s Small lizard men. To be fair though, that’s not Dungeon Meshi’s fault, it’s really just all of the general fantasy genre’s fault for not agreeing what a ‘Kobold’ is
@@SkeleGemJapanese D&D is a whole another branch with the traditions of their own. One of such traditions is orcs being really pig-like (Sometimes outright bipedal pigs), and another - kobolds being dog-like.
One of the many characters I've created was a wildfire druid orc. I gave them the mentality of, "Never fight nature." "You will wear your scars into battle with pride, but let them heal first." "Revenge will be worthless if you die."
Still very much war hungry, but more pragmatic. I enjoy working with lore that I've been given.
"you will wear your scars into battle with pride, but let them heal first" is honestly a great mentality to have anyways, thank you
Those are good takes to use for them! :P
That’s really good
I like the idea "revenge is worthless if you die" encourages you to make sure your square, but not recklessly
I JUUST played a orc druid for my first game ever oh my god THIS was the EXACT vibe i was going for, maybe with a bit more booky and healing vibes BUT THIS. oh my god thank you so much for the inspiration
Once had an orc paladin whose oath was to strive to be the best at anything he pursued
His chosen pursuit? The parties chef who always spoke about how cooking was a battle against your ingredients, using fire and utensils to force them to submit to your will
That was a fun character
You're a geniuos for coming up with that
@@Crazyturtle879 oh it wasn't my character it was a different party members
@@TheScarletMenagerie seriously, great job on your honesty. It's a rare trait nowadays, it's nice to see someone who cares to have it.
_King shit._
Pretty iconic if you ask me 💅🏻
Now I'm remembering the orc character I made.
A one eyed orc exiled from his tribe (that's how he lost his eye) for the unforgivable sin of not believing civilization to be automatically bad.
Yet he's also a paladin granted powers by Grumsh. (Yeah, he's a little confused too.)
He now wanders through more civilized lands attempting to learn their ways so that orcs might adapt them to truly conquer.
He's literally an evil paladin with the Oath of Conquest.
Hell yea
bros working dat Intimidating Presence and conquerors aura FTW! Well played, sir.
I'm screaming in my garage for the Eberron video...DAILY.
I get up, eat breakfast, SCREAM IN THE GARAGE, then I take a shower, get to work...
agreed, literally everyday
If only we would be so lucky...
same 😩
ORCS ARE BEST, GREEN IZ BEST, DEREFOR ORCS IZ GREEN
This git krumps
Love your profile stay green brother
Well sed broffa
Waaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!
Oy, Wat y'lot muck'n bout on youtube! We got E'umies to krump! WAAAAAAAGH!
My favorite corellon v. Gruumsh story is that they were brothers and to compensate for corellon being the prettiest most specialest, Gruumsh got an eye that could see the future, which corellon gouged out, robbing Gruumsh of his clairvoyance.
And it makes the lots things more dickish there, because they fought a war to get rid of some Eldritch horror, a war that Gruumsh was MVP of. Him not getting what he deserved makes Corellon an ass.
@@pepperjack3777 I think it just makes him more interesting. Rather than just a god born of pure evil, which I find pretty boring, he's actually kind of a tragic character
Cry about it@@pepperjack3777
@@pepperjack3777 Except that never happened and Drow got the wooby treatment specifically because Drizzt exists.
And now they are pushing for the "off shoot" Drow specifically because it makes zero sense for there to be so many "good drow" complete with their own goddess with just stragglers from Lolth.
And all of this is said in mind with the idea that R.A. himself has said that he thinks Drizzt deflated the menace of the drow, the issue was that he made that criticism but never did anything about it. Because money.
@@LupineShadowOmega
This glory robbery actually works as a perfect set up for making elves believable antagonists in the story of a Orc protagonist
the greyish skin thing is actually closer to tolkiens original description(of course if humans come in multiple colors no reason orcs cant so no reason not to have both)
I always imagine them like Tolkien orcs. But as the black uruks of mordor. Dark grey, almost black skin, greasy hair, sun resistent and bigger versions of goblins.
The goblins are for me the rank and file orcs and snagas, sick yellow green or grey skin, greasy hair, crippled elves.
But seeing what Half Orcs exist in LotR, too. I am concerned about those in DnD. As Saruman did something so incredible evil to create them, that not even Sauron did it. Before Saruman, only Morgoth created Half Orcs. Apparently, orcs and humans can not breed living offsprings, if not for dark magic.
Tolkien was very much about the corruption subtext, about power corrupting people and making them evil. Tolkien's orcs are the mindless killing machines people can become once they forget the simple good things of life under a corrupt power, because that power made them. It's notably about war
They're twisted elves and represent evil, an evil we can find in real life, having orcs as an individual race is just radically different because the story we tell is about a people that is not elves or humans and exist on their own
@@jarlnils435 yeah i love a lot the uruk-hai or Uruks of insergard, and of course i love they armor's, they are just cool warmonger's
Humans don't come in many colors. We come in white and yellow.
@@liberalistbat6352 no, humans come in various shades of rosee and brown.
Some can change colour from very pale rosee to red and light brown. If hit with blunt force, they can turn blue, violet, green and yellow.
I love this. I'm currently running a SpallJammer campaign where my players have 'adopted' the Orc tribe on Chandos. I'm combining the "jock" angle with the "Romans were the jocks of the ancient world" to turn them into a kind of "Orcish Roman Empire".
Your ability to ask “what if…?” And then create that story is incredible. You respect the connection the community has to the themes and ideas as they are and beautifully weave within and around the given constraints to tell a deeper and richer story that shines a new light on an old tale.
Thank you for sharing your stories and creativity. It’s definitely helped me to be more creative with my own story telling and to look for more interesting ways to answer the question of how do I take what I like and make it what I love?
I have no other way to say it, but every time I see you’ve uploaded a video it absolutely makes my day. Thank you for sharing your imagination and creativity with us.
Yeah like he said! Cant wait for that rogue Lich build
One of the most creative reiterations you've done thus far. I can't help but imagine two orcs sitting at a table growing slowly more angry and aggressive towards each other while arguing aboot philosophy.
Just like the Greek Philosophers of old... Remember, Plato meant broad
@@drakunauger3324 call that a philassopher
"No, Karug, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!"
@@drakunauger3324Also Diogenes went out of his way to insult everyone, and Pythagoras drowned someone for proving that irrational numbers exist.
I love the idea of an Orc philosopher
I have an Orc bard and this fits him perfectly. He's a big dumb sweetheart who only wants to play heavy metal (he has an enchanted lute/amp made by his gnome friend). His only goal is to learn better licks and find a drummer he thinks is worthy enough to jam with. He doesn't like violence, but will bonk if he has to.
Please tell me you are/have given him Barbarian as a multiclass because all I could imagine was Orc Jack Black, thanks to Double Fine's Brutal Legend
My half-orc bard has a Noble background (his human dad banged an orc mistress (his dad just like me frfr)) and the way I ran him was that he loves fencing and uses a rapier. He think's he's a slick fellow with a rapier but really he attacks with Strength all the time and ends up overwhelming his fencing opponents with brute force. But when a giant Nobleman just haymaker'd you with a rapier, who are you to argue with him?
He uses castanets as his instrument and I use it as an excuse for him to Jojo pose all over the place.
I love him
Big "Power of the Horde" energy, I love it
@@truekurayami SKA-DOOOOOSH!!!
I was very disappointed when starting BG3, rolling a ferocious Half Orc barbarian, only to find out all the voices sound like Hugh Grant.
Right, you'd think if you'll just give four different voices per gender for nine different races, at least they could be a bit distinct? But there's barely variation in them, just a very slight "They might be in their 40s rather than 20s" and that's about it. Would've been better at that point to not have the custom character speak at all, and simply have race specific grunts and such.
@@chromasus9983 Well maybe this will be fixed with mods now. We already got a fully modded companion that is in early access you could play as an origin character.
I LOVE your take on the Corellon and Gruumsh conflict. Particularly the idea that there are two distinct categories of gods: "creator" and "destroyer". It a very fun concept to play around with, as most divine beings seem to prefer being creators to destroyers. You could also use it to expand upon the relationships between Gruumsh, Corellon, and other major D&D deities.
For instance, Lolth started as a "normal" elf, before using her ambition to achieve dominance for the elves, and godhood for herself. Maybe she played BOTH Corellon and Gruumsh against eachother, giving each a type of poison that would wound and weaken the other, enabling her to siphon the other. Gruumsh loses, and Lolth becomes a "creator god" by stealing some of his essence.
Also, Maglubiyet. Maglubiyet is currently fighting against Gruumsh, probably to conquer the orcs and make them the 4th race to fall under his control (along with goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears). It could be that he is an unusual "destroyer" deity, that is trying to become a "creator". And he now wants Gruumsh, who was one of the original creator deities, but is now "vulnerable", being an incomplete hate-driven reflection of his former self. (Bonus points: this also helps distinguish the two otherwise similar deities. Gruumsh is warring to take the regions of creation he was wrongfully denied. Maglubiyet is an interloper, that just wants to conquer and take what was never rightfully his).
Fun fact : The reason you can play as an Orc in the elder scrolls , is because the player character made a truce / alliance with them in the second game .
Well , provided you didnt just say No to main quest lady after she send you the second latter asking "I have been waiting hero so many day , you coming or not ?"
They love their in-lore explanations for retcons 😊 it's neat
I love that in Elder Scrolls both orcs and dwarves are subraces of elves, and I've borrowed some of that lore for my own setting.
@@digitaljanus I feel like it would be funny if every humanoid was an elf subrace. Instead of humanoid, you could say "elflike".
Well, more because the two-faced God of Time broke within that moment due to the divine power of an artificial god awakening to be used using an artifact of an Emperor of old, making each possibility come to pass at once - creating a god-moon out of a mortal sorcerer, granting new power to the current Empire, asserting the regional power of three separate kingdoms, allowing orcs to create their own state and be accepted as part of "civilized" society, as well as killing an immortal essence of the combined identities of an old warlord of the North who was possessed by a God of Humanity and Chaos and orchestrated numerous events behind the scenes after "dying" but not really, a personal wizard of an Emperor and the Emperor himself, who were used in one of the reawakening of the aforementioned artificial god, whereas said god then disappeared once again only to then later be discovered and attempted to be used again by a demigod who came upon his power through a subverted form of realizing his own nature as a character within a dream while still asserting his own ego to retain his identity within the dream.
I love this shit
I love the elder scrolls
Honestly this is probably some of your best work in regards to lore. Like it fits in almost seamlessly with the already present lore especially since we already do know Gruumsh getting his eye gouged out massively changed him. Especially since that eye came with most of his wisdom and foresight in it.
As for this original form of Gruumsh, I think he definitely fits a kind of nature god vibe with the Verdant Orcs. Like if Corellon and the Elves were as pretty as a field of flowers, Gruumsh and his Orcs were as mighty as the oldest of Redwood Trees. Though with the tusks, general toughness, violent temperament, and connection to nature, I think some boar theming fits them. Now with the Verdant Orcs, I could see them keeping tamed boars around as more pets, mounts, and other roles. Now I wanna make a Verdant Orc Ranger with a super swine for an animal companion.
> Mounts
DID SOMEBODY SAY HOG RIDERS
@@touhoufan7071 Unleash the Boars of War!!
Hear me out: Orcen bear riders.
One thing I like about the Pathfinder orcs is that they are described as being not just angry and violent, but incredibly emotional and passionate. Which means an orc's love would make them profondly loyal and affectionate. I think it would perfectly fit with your past Gruumsh version.
Aww how sweet
They are the 80/90s father. Love you so much that they will beat up your bully and then their dad
I’m pretty sure half-orcs are described similarly in the 5e PHB. I recall something about them feeling everything intensely.
Maybe it's the go to response for making the lore less black and white now that people want to play what was once evil monsters. I would not be surprised that they naturally come to the same conclusion, Pathfinder was a product of 3.5 DnD after all.
Don't Pathfinder Half-Orcs have a variable attribute bonus?
Meaning you can have a Half-Elf with a greater racial strength but lesser racial dexterity to a Half-Orc.
Even though all the other races abide by racial bonuses and maluses, such as halflings being weaker and elves being frail.
Does human attributes just overwrite any attributes of Elves or Orcs?
I'd love to see a lore revamp/rewrite like this for Lizardfolk. I don't like that they're described as "emotionless", when it's so much more interesting to have them just express them in a very different way.
I love the older editions of Lizardfolk where they have a single god/goddess that they change the gender and name of when they worship, depending on what they pray for
The gods were two once but became combined when one was paralyzed by thought in what to do, meanwhile the other stood for instinctual action
So the lizardfolk people follow that ethos in that setting
In this setting hermaphrodite lizardfolk were also a thing and VERY intelligent and capable of magic and truly representative of their deity
My group is full of players that started in ADnD. Orcs remain an NPC race in our campaigns. In some campaigns I have them old school evil baddies but often I present them as more barbaric/tribal and warlike race rather than evil for evil's sake.
Fun fact: Plato, the philosopher, was also a wrestler. "Plato" wasn't even his real name, it's just a nickname that means broad. Supposedly, when he lost an argument in philosophy, he would just flex his muscles and suddenly the other person would agree with him.
Basically what I'm saying is that Plato was 100% an orc philosopher.
I’m making this now
Yea big untrue
@@retrodyl96 Would have been closer to true if he had said Diogenes, but would still have been a gross misrepresentation.
Yeah indeed, anybody who is smart works out. It's just hollywood fg indoctrination that told people that skinny and weak = smart, thus all the normies stay weak fgs
@retrodyl96 The flexing part yeah, that's not true. The other part is fine though.
The ship has very much NOT already sailed on doing an Eberron focused video. Eberron is great, and by far my favorite D&D setting. Not to mention Keith Baker has also put out two "3rd party" (I struggle to call them 3rd party when he literally created Eberron) source books for 5e in Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron, with a third and final one on the way called Frontiers of Eberron. Not to mention an additional bit of content in the form of Dread Metrol, which delves into an Eberron specific Domain of Dread.
Keith Baker and Eberron have addressed one of my biggest issues with the way 5e has gone about tackling different settings, that being the "one-and-done" mentality where they only release a single sourcebook for a specific setting. It's led to 5e feeling a wide as an ocean, but deep as a puddle, when it comes to worldbuilding. People want their favorite settings to be more fleshed out and elaborated on, and thanks to Keith Baker we've actually gotten that with Eberron, even if it's not TECHNICALLY official content (and with what WoTC has been putting out lately, who really cares about what's official anymore?).
Eberron fans recognize creative greatness: in HellCow Keith or Pointy Hat. The union can only produce more greatness.
What Keith did with Goblins and Orcs is one of the main reasons Eberron has become the default setting I run in D&D. Orcs being the first Druids that fought back an invasion of Aberrations is so badass in my opinion.
The one and done pattern with 5E wouldn't be so shit if they actually released more settings. Content draught's more like content starvation.
How have you not written a book yet, this reimagining of Gruumsh is inspired. First class storytelling.
He has written two lol. Check out Dragon Stew and Hexbound.
To be fair; is not even a retelling.
He didn't retcon anything, he just delved further in to the material and came to a logical conclusion of why orcs and Gruumsh are the way they are.
If Ef Greenwood isn't going to fill in the missing details, Pointy Hat might as well.
Lloths fall and how it effects drow society is another prime example of how the so-called "good" creator gods aren't exactly that good and how the "evil" creator gods and their creations aren't exactly evil and are, in actuality, victims.
@@calliclassic much appreciated. I’ll check them out.
"It's wrong to just assume that the god of an entire people is evil, vicious, and underhanded. Okay, let's start by assuming that the god of the elves was evil, vicious, and underhanded..."
Given the official lore, he kinda is though...
@@bryanillenbergvideo didn't do a good job of establishing that
@@sweett3253 Sorry for long delay in responding.
My advice is to read Mordenkainen's tome of foes.
He punishes all elves because Lolth wanted to replace him.
the orc and elf wars being called orcgate makes it sound like a real world scandal
My favorite character in Forgotten realms was a Half Orc Druid, who's motivation was raised by a farmer, his mother died during childbirth after she and other townsfolk were rescued from an Orc bandit group (you can guess what happened), he had twin brother, they both were more orc than human which caused the blood of Gruumsh to "boil" harder in them, they were bullied, his brother ran away, my character ran into the forest one day to chop trees to let off his anger, suddenly one of the trees went "ouch!", then when an oak Treeant held my (teenage) character in his hand and saw him terrified and lost chose to teach him the ways of Druidism to make up for his rampage of cutting down trees and to help him control his anger.
My character had then three personal quests that was open ended: Find out what happened to his twin brother, repair and regrow forests, and to try to overcome the curse that flowed through his blood due to the wicked god of the Orcs.
...but. Would the ways of druidism be enough to overcome the curse which infected his orcish blood?
Would Khaddock the Restless ever find a way to quell the rage Boiling within his very veins?
Edit: and now I've watched the entire video, it fits Khaddock even better!
I really love the idea of these Verdant orcs. I actually had an idea about them that I think is cool. What if, for a story where they are trying to cure and restore Gruumsh, you make it so they are not all the way green, but instead are gray with green spots. As they go further in restoring Gruumsh, his influence on them grows, signified by the green spreading on them.
YES *PLEASE* make an Eberron video!!! I'm so looking forward to what you could add to the setting, and Keith baker *has* been making followup books for it, even if not licensed with WOTC - see Exploring Eberron and Morgrave Miscellany
Eberron is the best official setting for use in non-official rules sets. Pointy Hat will benefit greatly from a video or two of Eberron based exploration.
Ok, this is REALLY well-done! You clearly put a lot of thought into analyzing and re-imagining the role of orcs in fantasy. I truly respect the dedication to not forcing a retcon on the Forgotten Realms lore AND creating something that isn't harmfully stereotyped. Inspirational, in fact. Phenomenal work!! 💚
P.S. As a lover of the Eberron setting, I'd be curious about what you'd pull from to make a twist. (Warforged are probably the lowest-hanging fruit but they already got a video - maybe Shifters? Maybe as an example of the many attempts to bridge mystic fantasy and science fantasy? 500k special? 👀)
Dude, your videos were extremely good before (and still are). But this one is off the charts amazing. The jokes land so hard, I had several laugh out moments. That never happens to me. Amazing job, man. Wish you all the best.
I've read somewhere a version of that "Orc Genesis" lore where Grumsh made them to be able to survive and conquer any territory, so i usually use biome themed colored orcs in my games, like, grey for mountais, yellow for deserts, white for snowy places, green for forest, i also give them some bonuses based on that biomes.
FWIW, the original published account of the "biome lottery" story didn't just have Gruumsh poke holes in the landscape to make caves. His spear-strikes blighted parts of the territories assigned to each of the other races - rotting the elves' forests, cracking the dwarves' mountains with deep chasms, splitting the gnomes' hills into dusty badlands, and drying up the halflings' meadows into wastes - to spite the other gods for mocking him, as well as create places for his orcs to survive and grow strong through hardship. Basically, if humans got the right to live in any habitat, Gruumsh's hissy-fit got the orcs the right to live anywhere that sucks.
Eberron does a lot right. I'd love to see a Pointy Hat video on it. Lots of excellent lore and really does a good job flipping tropes and giving a lot of ways to make it your own.
Dude this Verdant Orcs concept is downright brilliant. I’m running a campaign with a pacifist, violence-as-last-resort party and wanted to incorporate Orcs, my favorite race, but didn’t know how. Can I steal this?
Also, appreciated how the video didn’t take the lazy approach to explaining why Orcs are “problematic.” Kudos!
Dude, he literally gives it to you for free! Go all out, and use it!
No. You cannot steal it. It is not possible to steal what has been given to you freely.
Dats no orc. Dats a green elf pointy ear git!! It’s kumpin time boyz, waaaagh!!
While I wasn’t expecting trash (always love your videos to bits), I wasn’t expecting this to become one of my favorites from you!! You've inspired me in my little non-dm imaginings!
Now that's what I call some good homebrew!
I can already imagine an Verdant Orc fighter who specializes in defensive fighting tanking around on battlefields playing at being a Merc with a heart. Background is Soldier and was once the village guard for a small village of Verdant Orcs. One day his mother and other Orcs Elders receive a vision telling of a set of scrolls that might be the answer to restoring "The Green" to all orc kind. A type of astral magic that could heal magic through "faith". Unsure of the true meaning of this vision, but still eager to find out if there truly is a way to unite all of Orc kind once more, he sets out to adventure as a means to learn more about the possibilities that this vision could bring!
The best interpretation of Orcs I've seen (amendment: the best, prior to this video) was, once again, Sir Terry Freaking Pratchett, RIP. They were a rumored artificial race, believed to be made primarily from Goblin stock, engineered to be supersoldiers; not just fast and strong, but highly intelligent. A main character in one book realizes that he, himself, IS a surviving Orc, and on seeing a vision of the original Orc armies, realized that they couldn't have been based on goblins--the only race ferocious enough to based them off of was *humans.*
Sounds a lot like Uruk-hai, actually.
@@farkasmactavish Just swap the elves with humans. Still interesting.
What novel/series was this in?
@@crapparc Discworld.
@@crapparc Unseen Academicals, from the Discworld series.
WotC has tried to "fix" the issues presented by older editions, something that is admirable, but they often take the laziest option when they do so. You however, put in the effort without retconning anything, which is incredible. So thank you and please keep adding to this game.
Basically giving all of the races the same attributes and taking away a lot of the racial bonuses that made certain playable races interesting or unique in the first place. All in the hopes of not being racist towards a bunch of fictional races. A large population of people are literally afraid to offend someone's imagination.
@@steveoconnivo9666it's exhausting. As someone who actually cares about intersectionality and systemic abuses, watching them be like this is just making these problems harder to talk about. Too many new players think that they have to follow the books to the letter. Ya don't. As a permaDM of 20+ years now.... just TALK to me. Tell me you want your elf to have strength instead. Ask for little story relevant changes and freebies. I WANT to give them to you because it may just mean you care about telling a story. But 5e players just can't do that for some reason. Can't imagine why, WotC. Not like you decided to turn new players into gatekeepers over a hobby they're the fresh meat in, WotC. Not like you need to get out of your own way, Wot. CEEEEEEEE.
@@steveoconnivo9666yeah I do not like the "flattening/homogenization" of all races. That simply makes the lore less interesting.
While I do prefer players being able to apply their attribute bonuses as they please, I still want to see the default bonuses for the race itself as it provides context for their natural strengths and weaknesses. Players are main characters so of course they can be the exception to a rule. If anything, a potential scholarly magi Orc is an interesting character concept *because* it subverts expectations. We need the base expectation in order to make this subversion. And people love their subversions- Drizzt didn't become the most popular DnD character for no reason.
Also, if you see Hadozee or Orcs and immediately start imagining real world ethnic groups... That seems like a you problem.
What needed to be fixed?
@darinhardie8514 Yes. Very true. They weren't Picts, Gauls or Germanics.
They were African.
That's not an orc, that's a green elf.
orcs has elf origins in tolkien works, so is not out of place i think
*cooler elves
Orcs are just buff elfs
Nice Professor DM reference 👍🏼
absolutely love this little progression -- i've been waiting for a chance to play with a half orc paladin based around the same idea, though i'll admit i hadn't known about the coloration thing. the chlorophyll explanation was so cool!
2 am, sleepy af, tomorrow is exam, seeing your new video
"Ah f*ck it, bring me it! "
XD same here
Good luck with your exam !
Hope it went well!
The Verdant Orc lore (and art!) you dropped at the end was incredible! This whole video was a pleasure to watch 😊
In an asian-themed (Chinese and Korean, not Japanese) world I created for a oneshot, orcs are the most technologicaly advanced of all races and second in number only to elves (Who reproduce as quickly as other races while living and being young for 10 times as long, so no wonder they're first).
Orcs are so advanced in fact, that they invented gunpowder by attempting to copy dragon breath, and were the first outside elven lands to develop both glassworking and metallurgy, and on top of all that they control and develop every major trade route in the known world (90% of the world is unknown, but it's still a lot).
But they're still warriors, just more British empire and less vikings in terms they do warfare.
Edit: Also, in this world dwarves are Korean.
Well my DnD world now has a British empire run entirely by orcs. Thank you for this
In my fantasy setting the closest thing to the Orcs would be oni Which comes from Japanese folklore but their origins were just originally humans that were so desperate to get away from a virus made by a god so they decided to consume demonic blood which changed them.
Yum, that is some good orcs. Add in some press-ganging to check off the 'evil' box for free conflict and away you go.
That is AWESOME!🤩 What does their technology resemble? I know elves tend to have a nature or futuristic-themed, but does orc tech have a sort of “London steampunk” sort of look
I think it's like in warhammer 40k, orc tech is diesel punk and looks like it's made out of garbage.@@davidkoudelka10
I think this is genuinely one of the best videos you've made. The way you incorporated the lore, the script, the editing, amazing.
also, i hate to be that person, but do you know when you'll post the Archon stats? your video inspired me to write a whole campaign so having a stat block for one of the main NPCs would be nice 😅
1:49 green is not better, green... IZ BEST!
Eberron is my favorite D&D setting, and I've been playing since 2e. So I'd love to see you cover the setting!
I absolutely adore orcs, I think they are endlessly fascinating both as genre staples and what that entails as well as how varied and fun their manifestations can be. The dnd iterations have issues but I think Volo’s has some real highlights. What you did with Gruumsh was fantastic! It makes so much sense and is just plain interesting and engaging which is a gold star for lore/worldbuilding. I’ll always be of the opinion that Gruumsh is kinda justified cause what the other gods did was messed up. You really flew with that and gave Gruumsh some great nuance, which is hard given how hes like.
Only critique I could offer (and this is quite common with dnd orcs so don’t feel bad) but some of the other orc gods present some incredible opportunities to add onto this. Luthic alone is imo the most interesting facet to orc lore in dnd but she is sadly often forgotten due to how niche she is. She is currently the main divine steward behind orcs in canon lore (or whatever counts for canon now, but thats a whole thing) and is a protector and shepherd as well as a role model for orc women and mothers. In contrast to her brutal and violent husband she is much more subtle and defensive, though still strong and fierce in her own right. Honestly she is likely the only reason orcs haven’t completely died out as she is responsible for fertility as well as reigning in their bloodlust spurred on by her husband. Its also implied shes in a loveless marriage with Gruumsh which is just fascinating.
Given all that it would be pretty easy to add her into the story. She was Gruumsh’s devoted wife before his madness, but now finds herself having both to endure the shattered husk of the god she used to love, as well as working to ensure her people can survive and possibly heal him. She could be heavily influential among the verdant orcs, though I imagine she has to spend much of her focus on the non verdant orcs. I would also wonder if she would not be quite spoiled against the vengeance many orcs seek given what it has wrought, no matter how justified the initial intentions. This would explain her more defensive nature as well as why shes so unsatisfied with Gruumsh as she might ultimately blame him for this. Drama! (Its interesting to note that theres some small implications that Lolth and Gruumsh’s alliance against Corellon might have been something more…)
Yurtrus is the orc god of death and disease. Maybe he spawned after the curse broke Gruumsh as a sort of manifestation of its effects. He is that poison made divine through its merging with Gruumsh. Thus he is responsible for the withering and entropic effects orcs have upon things they attempt to create. It would fit within his general domain and make him a potential obstacle or a potential avenue to healing Gruumsh. I’m just spitballing though. Still there are many possibilities.
Shargaas is also an orc god of death, though hes much more focused around darkness, cowardice, and trickery. Imagine if he was completely different before Gruumsh lost his eye, but upon seeing his overgod so hideously changed he ran and hid instead of attempting to handle his fury with the rest of the gods. This outcast him and branded him as he is now, a god of rogues and scoundrels who skulk shamefully in the dark of night. He could be an element that despises the verdant orcs for he thrives on caves and dark places rather than the sun or nature.
Gruumsh’s two sons are the least interesting of the bunch, but maybe they were both effected by their father’s madness too. Bahgtru was too weak in the mind and so succumbed to his father’s madness wholeheartedly, turning him into the boundless rage monster we know today. Ilneval may have been able to handle the curse, remaining mostly sane, though still tinged with a need for bloodlust and battle. This would explain why hes the more strategic and calculating of the family. He probably supports his father’s mission of revenge and is a patron of those orcs, verdant or otherwise, who seek to fulfill that duty.
Theres so much more that could be covered with each god but hopefully this can give a partial idea of how to include the often forgotten other deities in the orc pantheon. I loved this video dude, keep up the good work!
another detail on how you could play a half orc in an interesting way at least following the manual: Half orcs are very emotional creatures as the player handsbook says in the race description "Beyond the rage of Gruumsh, half-orcs feel emotion powerfully. Rage doesn't just quicken their pulse, it makes their bodies burn. An insult stings like acid, and sadness saps their strength. But they laugh loudly and heartily, and simple pleasures - feasting, drinking, wrestling, drumming, and wild dancing - fill their hearts with joy. They tend to be short-tempered and sometimes sullen, more inclined to action than contemplation and to fighting than arguing. And when their hearts swell with love, they leap to perform acts of great kindness and compassion." you can write excellent concepts with this basis. As well as excellent roleplaying (and above all they make half-orcs who go beyond the basic concept of "bad monster go brr" even more viable)
Sometimes I forget how awesome and talented Pointy Hat is when it comes to storytelling. I had literal CHILLS while listening to the lore of Gruumsh having a represed psich that is actibly trying to restore his children. I love everything in this video
Thought of an orc war cleric once. Picture a hyper aggressive missionary promoting and giving passionate sermons about his pantheon of war gods.
An interesting take on Gruumsh. Typically in my games, I've not redeemed Gruumsh or given him a magical reason like this (I also don't have it be Corellon who he fought) but instead I use Luthic, his wife. She's not much "nicer" but she embodies the literal energy of a mama bear for her Orc Children, so I tend to have Gruumsh losing it over vengeance and getting back what they lost, and Luthic, who originally was with him, finally going "I love you, but our CHILDREN need something different." and offering a different path.
Sometimes I even fast-forward and have Gruumsh and her working together.
Back in the 3e days.
I noticed Paladins in Fareun needed a god, but did not need to match the God's alignment.
SO I rolled up a Half-Orc Paladin of Gruumsh.
His goal was to bring back the original Gruumsh of Balance.
His main enemies were the church of Grumsh,m who wanted to keep the current Gruumsh,.
DMs hated it and called me a bad RPer.
But now, It just means I made the first Verdant Orc.
That's a shame, that's such a fun character concept and easy for a dm to work with for motivations
Fun Fact: Paladin DOESN'T need to worship a god, that is the Cleric thing
@@vtalvarez2000 it depends on the edition
@@vtalvarez2000 By D&D rules, true
Buit many of the Forgotten Realms setting books say that on Faerun they need one.
Actually, yeah! I would love if you made a video on Eberron.
I love your way of explaining stuff and eberron isnt necessarilly the most intuitive of settings (same with Dragonlance/Krynn) for me at least.
Looking forward for it already my friend, have a great week!
I love this video!! I'm glad we can both embrace the alignment "inheritence" while also allowing for complexity and depth. Awesome story. I will definitely use this in my setting
Seeing this video gave me a traumatic flashback to Extra Credits
Us all bruv
Us all
Storytime?
@@goldenhorde6944
They claimed Orcs are racist in concept because they were made to resemble black people.
@@Lilliathi
the video itself doesn't talk at all about the origins of orcs in fantasy, instead it talks about the effects of bioessentialism in fiction on player agency and moral stakes. the sister article does, though. it outlines that tolkien's orcs were a stand-in for mongols, and when general sentiments of 'barbaric and uncivilized' people shifted from them to black americans, the barbaric and uncivilized fantasy race changed to match the culture.
a different discussion to origin itself, is whether or not indulging in, generally, bioessentialism in fiction, and specificially, such media with troubling origins, says anything about us personally... which is kind of a big question mark.
@@g_vost
Tolkien's orcs do not show anything close to mongol culture, and an equivalent to Asia exists in LotR. This article was written by left wing extremists who are looking for racism. The same extremists, who deny bioessentialism, aka: genetics.
“To green, or not to green, that is the question”. --- WILFRIED OF QUAKESPEAR, ORC BARD, FATHER OF SIX
He must have worked at Games Workshop. Blizzard knows this as well.
i just wanted to say that ive been making homebrew setting as sorta a passion project for my own expansive menagerie of characters i'll never play because i'm a forever dm. i've used brownies and courtly elves as key parts of the lore as one of the defining features of the world is how it WAS an extention of the feywild but isn't anymore. so thank you so much for creating them, also alarcan from the 100k sub oneshot is there too.
i made up a tavern for when i ran that oneshot thats run by a blunt mannered orc and chefed a tiefling who is so squeaky he's barely understandable. i try and include it in every oneshot or campaign i run because of the reactions i get whenever they walk into a tavern and hear oliver (the orc's) voice and the wacky explaination of how they somehow moved their business to an entirely new location.
I came across this vid at the exact right time. I'm starting a new DnD campaign and want to play an green half-orc that leans toward pacifism (as a base marker) and live the his younger years of life as a nomad in the forest. this is such a help!! Awesome vid!
I love the way you write and how you take prior lore and themes and flip them on their heads or add to them in a creative and interesting way. We have very similar creative styles and I hope to get to meet you some day to just say thank you for your content and to shake your hand. I guess that means I'll have to make it out to Gencon eventually. Anyway, thanks for all of your videos and free classes, races and stories. I really appreciate them!
I love these changes to Gruumsh and it really does help flesh out the godbuilding lore!
But Pointy, please! We still need the Archon Dragon Stat block! The description hasn't been updated yet! 😭
In 3.5 Monster Manual on pp. 203-204, there is a section for Orcs as Characters, as there are for many humanoid and -ish races.
Without going into the twiddly bits, their mods are +4 Str, -2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha. So they have been available as a playable race for at least 20 years.
those were a bit weird.
@@chakradarrat8832The stats are perfect for a savage evil race, though: strength for rushing and raiding, low int to prevent them from becoming an organised threat, low wisdom so they don't understand their lifestyle keeps them down, and low charisma so they only listen to force and fail to negotiate :P
There's a pathfinder class called trox who have +6 str and the same negatives. Just taking the chance to prop up one of the coolest PC races in a hot minute tbh.
An important part to remember is like the Tiefling, an Orc would be gernerally hated and treated with fear and caution
I mean, play the game you want to play, but I don't get that people nowadays want to simultaneously say "people hate and fear orcs and tieflings" and "orcs and tieflings have nothing inherently evil about them; they're basically just humans with a different skin color and some physical differences."
I mean, are we making two entire D&D races around the concept of "racism is bad"? I agree racism is bad, but that's such a lukewarm uninteresting take nowadays. I'm sure that everyone at the table already agrees that racism is bad. Not to mention that this way you're effectively using orcs and tieflings as an analogy for black people if you make them the "not evil, but people hate them anyway" race, which is kind of weird. Meanwhile I never saw the old "naturally drawn to evil" orcs as being analogues to black people. And if orcs are inherently drawn to evil, then it actually makes sense for people to hate and fear them.
And to top it off, people still want a "yeah you can murder them without feeling bad about it" race, so now that we turned orcs into basically humans, we've given gnolls the inherently-evil tag. Which means that we still have a "murder these guys" race, only a less cool one than orcs.
I'm sure that in 8E, people will go "wait it's racist to say that all gnolls are evil", and then gnolls will become basically humans, and then we'll invent some other race that people can murder without pity.
@@lightworker2956 I can't bring myself to agree that gnolls aren't cool. They're not a replacement for orcs, that's true, they're cackling, fearsome sadistic maniacs, like more malicious, large goblins. They're vicious, while orcs are brutal. An orc would smash your legs and leave you to bleed out. A gnoll would smash them then proceed to bite into your flesh for its lunch.
Also, 10 bucks says IF gnolls become acknowledged as the de-facto "evil race" in dnd, one of the arguments as to why that's problematic will rely on either the matriarchal nature of their society OR on the whole pseudopenis deal, either "it's problematic because its existence implies gnolls are serial SA perpetrators and SA is wrong and must never be depicted" or "it's problematic because they have a clit-wiener like trans women out of bottom surgery so the gnolls CLEARLY represent trans people as perpetrators of SA", you know the deal. Fun thing being, barring MAYBE the matriarchy thing I doubt anything that I said would be mentioned in the text. I mean nothing that correlates orcs to black people is in there either and that lie's been repeated enough that a lot of people either believe it or pay it lip service.
From all the depictions I've ever seen, LOtR included, Elder Scrolls orcs still have the best lore. That whole Trinimac turning into Malacath myth is metal af
Every single Pointy Hat video I watch makes me love your videos and ideas even more. You rock!
FUCK I LOVE THE ORC YESSSSS I'M ITALIAN I DON'T TALK A REALLY GOOD ENGLIS BUT I LOVE YOUR VIDIO AND I LOVE TE ORC
Buono abbastanza da far passare il messaggio ;) keep it up!
@talscorner3696 thanks sir.Talscorner
Another interesting thing if you want to play a peaceful orc without bending Faerun lore: take a look into odonti orcs, a type of orcs blessed by eldath who try to live in peace and harmony. But sadly they got discovered by human and got ensalved to fight as soldiers but some remained. There is some cool lore to find about them online. (But sadly it’s not 5th edition)
I very appreciated your video and I really love your idea about gruumsh.
Don't forget about the Many-Arrows Tribe who usually prefer parley to raiding and even had their own kingdom for a little over a century in the Silver Marches.
Why do so many D&D lore bits end with "surprise slavery!". This is just a rethoric question because after a while it gets kinda old.
I do love how much you use imagery from the Warcraft film and Durotan, because honestly that movie did such a good job both having Orcs be sympathetic AND sticking to their known history. It's a shame the movie wasn't well received because that's one of my go-to depictions of Orcs.
I really know nothing about WoW or its lore, but I saw the movie and could have watched a two hour movie just about those orc characters. They were that compelling.
I never got around to seeing Warcraft even though I was actively raiding in WoW when it came out. (Oops.) Thank you for reminding me how good that lore could be - time to finally see it! (SAURFANG THE ELDER ILU)
Like goblins and most other evil races, they are usually evil due to their gods demanding evil behavior and punishing things like kindness and peace. Get rid of evil priests demanding evil actions then they can be any alignment. Alignment isn't necessarily bad, if used as a descriptor and not a limiter.
This should become D&D canon *immediately!* Great video and great ideas! Holy shit!
"The D&D police can't get you at your own table"
The Pinkertons may disagree
I love the design for verdant orcs. You did a really good job reimagining the lore without retconning it. Can you do tieflings? I know they don't "need" fixing, but I'd love an original subrace, maybe based on the 4 horsemen or ars goetia demons
Greetings!
But.. He did video about tieflings...
@@thrall6647it wasn't a reimagining though. I thought orcs were already reimagined, but this version combines conflicting depictions very well, and I'd like to see something similar for tieflings :)
Getting some serious Eilistraee vibes from this. Love it.
Would also love to see you tackle something similar with the drow and Eilistraee
At this point, every time I watch a pointy hat video the first thing I do is check the description for a goggle doc.
Antonio absolutely SNIPED me with the fun. audio clip over gruumsh and his single eye. I’m deceased.
Here's the thing, I actually really like the idea of different colored orcs for different areas. Green (most common) in forests and grasslands, grey in caves and caverns (and just rocky places), tan (Because I
Something from the homebrew world of my table, we have a hollow Earth type deal with sub races and monsters unique to that environment. Because the molten core of the planet center acting as a sun never sets, they have bright red skin that makes people confuse them for Hobgoblins on the surface.
Then there's purple...
I believe it was Roger E. Moore who came up with the Orc creation myth in a Dragon magazine article
That's right! He did all those "Point of View" articles in Dragon that still make up like 80%+ of the lore of the core D&D races. Well spotted!
The story of the "biome lottery" was from his article series on nonhuman pantheons. The story of elves and orcs arising from blood shed when their creator-gods beat each other up was from "Deities & Demigods".
Good news everyone! After One DnD drops, none of this matters. Effectively Hasbro will have defeated racism by deleting the differences between all races. Wait...
"Playable Orcs don't have a negative to intelligence" ...Anymore.
They definitely did on release.
Can't blame Gruumsh for being so pissed off it transfers to the orcs, if Corellon did pluck out one of his eyes I'd say he has every right to want revenge. Plus it would have been an unfair fight, the orcs' lone god against Lolth, patron goddess for the Drow, Corellon, patron god for(I assume) all elves, plus however many other elven gods there are? Big man had no shot at winning.
As a half orc player, it's fitting the elf god's name sounds like "quarreling" or "quarrel on"
No clue how I missed that.
I really like this video. I like orcs for some reason, I think I just like to attach myself to the less popular things. This video has great suggestions for orcs which I think they deserve. The reasoning is sound and compelling and I like how you managed to make everything to work.
The only thing that I would like now is something for those boar-brown orcs to make sense as well because they look cool. Maybe that coloration comes from having more hair/fur so this type of orc lives in colder climates like mountains.
Given that orcs tend to be very muscular and also have a shamanistic culture in some fiction, I never thought it made sense for them to be incapable of magic. So one thing I thought of was that they are actually very connected to magic in that it passively nourishes their muscles, like their muscles absorb magic from the air like nutrition to keep them in peak condition. They definitely still train and exercise but maintain a highly muscular physique with less effort than a human.
Side note, this video went from 14k to 2.2k over the course of watching it lol.
I think the brutish orc trope could still be applicable in what a certain fantasy community perceives in orcs, which could make them fear and tell stories of them doing bad things to teach their children life lessons (like with old folk tales where witches or certain fae are seen as the bad guys)
What we’re told isn’t always grounded in truth, though. I like to think elves might have spread certain stories or misinformation as a ‘teehee funny fae prank’ which has embedded a common perception of orcs in the material plane.
6:08 Oh that one web comic about futuristic Orcs and Elves pausing to remember why they are even fighting in the first place makes a lot more sense
I loath the orc reformation. But this is so original and creative; and most importantly, not a retcon. It respects the old lore. Truly great stuff. An inspiration to what could be when people want to build on the old instead of carelessly discard it.
best friday night event
Bruh the orc in the thumbnail summoned something primal in me
It's okay to call him daddy.
I'm kinda sad that you left out one of the neat bits of Gruumsh lore - that before he lost his eye, he was (reputedly) a seer of sorts, able to predict and plan against his foes, always several steps ahead. And when Corellon poked his eye out, he lost that ability, and his warmaking became short-sighted and one-dimensional.
Best video on orcs I've seen! I would love to see you revisit this topic after the new PBH 2024 drops. I think ditching half-orcs in favor of rewriting orcs is a great change and making orcs primarily nomadic fills a narrative hole they needed. Unfortunately every other video I see about the new orcs just has people being big babies because they showed ONE picture of the orcs living peacefully.
Oh no. Nomadic Orcs! Quick they are coming across the border, BUILD A WALL!
Orcs basically preforming photosynthesis was not what I expected but what I needed
The orcs in my setting are one of my favorites. They're not "evil and violent" but they are very "I want to be the best at what I do that I can be". An Orc that is heavily bought into their home culture will apply themselves really hard. Generally the only ones that aren't are either someone raised outside the usual culture they have or what amount to burnt out gifted kids. As such, if some group has an Orc at the top, that Orc is usually assumed to REALLY be good at what they're doing.
Soooo, what you're saying is;
orcs wanna be the very best,
That no one ever was
😂😂😂
@@TheWeiseth if you’re curious, there is an Orc named Dusty that’s determined to train as many magical beasts as he can. My players didn’t put the pieces together.
@@Veelofar ahaha "Dusty", amazing 😂 oh well, sometimes the joke lands, sometimes it doesn't. But at least you and I know that you're funny, and that's what counts, right? 😅
@@TheWeiseth To be fair, the best NPCs that are like that are just a little joke for the DM
Really would like to listen about gods, pantheons etc from you.
Great video
YES THE VIDEO I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!!!!
I think the verdant orcs are a great idea to mesh with the concept of Grummsh's consort: Luthic! Shes the goddess of orcs and the cave mother who tends to the younger orcs, beign the patron of the heartmothers who raise the younglings in the caves. On my campaign she has been a great window to show that there's still good and care inside Grummsh's heart and i think she would fit like a glove in the verdant orcs mission of healing their father. Great video as always!!
Every time you say something like "It's a pity this thing doesn't exist, there's no stat block or anything" I roll my eyes, but I can't stop myself from smiling 😆